Author's note: The following fanfiction is loosely based on the Justice League Unlimited episode "This Little Piggy." All participants in sexual activities in the story are at least 18 years of age.
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The picture of me didn't look too bad, I guess. Considering that my hunting form looked like a glowing silver mannequin. I mean, you can only see my general features in the picture, like arms, hands, and such. You couldn't make out my eyes, ears, or any small details.
I wasn't that fond of the name the media had given me: Shimmer. Perhaps Fury would have been better, even though I don't know if I was actually a Fury, or merely an agent of one. Or something else entirely.
Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.
My name is Samuel Reed. Everyone calls me Sam, except my grandmothers, and my Mom when she's pissed off at me. I'm a pretty average eighteen year old student-athlete --- at least I was before I was given "The Gift of the Furies."
It happened on my best friend Jim's eighteenth birthday. We were having it at Jack's Safari, which may sound lame, but is actually a fairly cool place. It's a sports bar/entertainment complex located in downtown River City which caters to young adults above the age of twenty-one. Usually, there's a restriction on underage attendees, such as teenagers having to be accompanied by an adult and no one under the age of twenty-one allowed after ten p.m. at night. Jim's Mom was the manager, though, and arranged for Jack's Safari's semi-annual downtime for maintenance to be at the same time as Jim's birthday. As you can imagine, everyone who was invited showed up, even though Jim's Mom made it perfectly clear that the party was definitely going to be non-alcoholic.
Jim and I weren't the most popular kids in high school, but we did okay. We were both starting players on the school's varsity baseball team, which meant we weren't in the top echelon of athletes at our high school, but we were in sight of the apex. So with a party at Jack's Safari, we did have the top clique of the school represented.
I was there with Sara Belle (yes, that's her real name, even though it sounds like the name of a line of frozen desserts), who had been my one of my two best friends since grade school. Me, Sarah and Jim had been best friends forever, and we all wanted to keep things that way. Unfortunately, both Jim and I had developed 'feelings' for Sarah over the last year, and it was pretty confusing for all of us.
Sarah was a real cutie, and in good shape too (she was on our high school's cross country team). At the time of the party, she wasn't dating anybody, and the three of us were still circling the possibility of her dating me or Jim seriously.
The party was going great, and the were a good cross section of people from the school. Everyone was enjoying themselves, until the arrival of the Alloy Men.
River City isn't like Gotham or Metropolis. Gotham had Batman, Metropolis had Superman, but both cities also had their share of supervillains. River City is a fairly big city, but we're lucky that we haven't drawn the attention of the major league supervillains. What problems we do have are handled by Reaction Force, a team of elite individuals drawn from the state police and national guards of our state and the state across the river from us. Reaction Force members are given special training and high tech weapons to handle the terrorists and criminals River City does attract. If anything happens that is over their head, they can always call on the Justice League, which had recently expanded its membership from the original seven.
Reaction Force was pretty much all River City ever needed, until the Alloy Men arrived on the scene. From what I understand, the Alloy Men were suspected to be ex-military with special forces training who used high tech battle suits to commit lightning strike robberies. So far, the tactics they used had helped them elude being apprehended by Reaction Force.
On the night of my best friend's birthday party, the Alloy Men hit River City's Diamond Exchange, home of one of the largest coalition of diamond and gem dealers in the country. Before they hit the Diamond Exchange, the Alloy Men set off several explosions across two states, luring away members of Reaction Force. Then they hit the Diamond Exchange.
Unfortunately for my friends and I, the running battle that happened between them and the local police force took them through downtown River City and Jack's Safari.
I know it was later said that the Alloy Men had expected Jack's Safari to be closed that night, but that didn't matter to me. It took the Alloy Men fifteen seconds to literally rip Jack's Safari in half. Nobody was killed, but the attack would leave my two best friends in a comas.
While everyone else was reeling from the impact, my eyes locked on the broken bodies of my two best friends in the world. At this point, my vision went red and everything became kind of hazy, but I think I've been able to figure out what happened from things I learned later on.
Across town, at the River City Memorial Hospital, a man chose that moment to die. Actually, he had been dying for the last week, and his attending doctors were amazed that their patient had lasted as long as he had.
The man in question had "The Gift of the Furies", and was waiting until "A Spirit of Pure Vengeance" appeared that could receive the Gift.
In this case, that Spirit was me.
When it descended upon me, I completely lost it. I found myself running down the path of destruction the Alloy Men had left behind them. I didn't know it at the time, but I was invisible and literally flying above the ground. You're probably wondering how I couldn't be aware of either of these things. It's simple. I was angry as hell at what the Alloy Men had done to my friends before the Gift had descended upon me. When the Gift hit me, my anger exploded a hundredfold.
I vaguely remember catching up to the Alloy Men, and after that, it's a blur. Fortunately for me, there was a news copter hovering nearby that caught the whole battle.
The footage they shot showed a shimmering man suddenly appear in the middle of five Alloy Men. By shimmering, I mean like the air above a hot sidewalk on a particularly warm August day. Every blast the Alloy Men landed on the silver man (me) dissipated; every blow was stopped cold in a shower of sparks against the shimmering air around the silver man.
The silver man tossed the men around like empty aluminum trash cans. When they tried to escape, the silver man pointed his hand at an Alloy Man. A wave of silver shimmering air flew from that hand, knocking the Alloy Man out of the air.
When the Reaction Force showed up to detain all the combatants, the silver man simply disappeared.
I don't remember the battle, or how I got back to the destroyed sports bar. Somehow, my disappearance or reappearance was never noticed. I just remember a paramedic helping me up, giving me a once over, telling me how lucky I was, then waving over a police detective. The detective asked me a few questions, took a few notes, then turned me over to my parents.
My Mom and Dad went nuts when I emerged from the police line surrounding Jack's Safari. I was still dazed as I watched my classmates emerge from the ruins of Jack's Safari, some under their own power, others on a stretcher.
The paramedic who had checked me out walked over to my Mom and Dad and told them I was olay, but it would probably be best if I saw our family doctor in the next day or so.
